When using dental implants in the jawbones of dental patients, an opening is first introduced into the jawbone, into which the implant body is inserted, e.g., screwed in with a corresponding threaded section. After the implant body has been inserted, the wound opening formed in the jawbone and overlying gums is temporarily closed by a cover film that acts as a membrane to heal the implant body, which for example consists of titanium, and protects the opening against a detachment of tissue cells and penetration of soft tissue, while simultaneously allowing an exchange of material between the wound opening and oral cavity. For example, such a cover film, which is also referred to as a membrane film in the present application, is known from EP 0 867 193 B1.
In order to here attach the membrane film to the jawbone over the wound opening, it is fixed in place with tacking nails, which exhibit a shank extending from the nail head to the nail tip, followed by a thickened area that acts as a barb after the nail has been driven through the film and into the jawbone. Also referred to below as membrane nails, such tacking nails along with the accompanying positioning instrument for driving the latter into a jawbone are described in EP 0 733 346 A1, for example.
During insertion of the membrane nails, the problem here becomes that the latter must be gripped by the nail head with the positioning element, and pressed into the receiving head of the tool by exerting a certain level of force. In order to prevent the danger of infection in the oral cavity as much as possible while placing the membrane nails, the nails must as far as possible only come into contact with objects and tools that were sterilized beforehand. This makes handling the nails during transport to the dentist as well as inserting them into the positioning instruments comparatively complicated, and generally requires another assistant to help the dentist remove the nails from a sterile transport package and subsequently insert them into the positioning instrument.
To this end, the nails are transported in special metal dispensers, into which separate holes are introduced from above, into which nails are individually inserted, so that the latter can be gripped with the insertion instrument on the nail head, and pulled out of the hole in the vertical direction.
In this conjunction, the applicant uses a dispensing device molded in a strip-shaped base body consisting of plastic material, wherein the latter is then inserted into a glass tube. The problem here arises that the nail heads protrude over the top side and bottom side of the strip-shaped base body, since the latter only exhibits a height less than the length of the nail. Another problem associated with the aforementioned dispensing device is that the base body for accommodating a nail cannot be placed on a substrate given the lack of any suitable support surface on the bottom side, but must rather be freely held by the dentist or a second person when the positioning element is pressed onto the nail head so as to mechanically snap the latter into the positioning device. Since the forces necessary for snapping the nails in are sometimes quite significant, the danger here is that the positioning device will slide off, and the base body with the nails accommodated therein will inadvertently come into contact with unsterilized objects, or even with body parts.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a dispensing cartridge for tacking nails for attaching medical films to bones, in which a plurality of tacking nails can be transported and stored without contact with external package parts, and which enables a sterile and easy removal of the tacking nails by means of a positioning instrument.